Reflections on Ice

Dancin' Blades ice show, 2012.  The Figure Skating Club of Minneapolis at Augsburg presents a star studded musical variety show -- ok maybe no stars, but it's musical!

Figure Skating

I've been training at FSC for a couple years.  It started with my daughter Lily taking lessons.  While we sat and watched her toddle along on the ice the thought of taking lessons ourselves just made sense.  Jill took them, I took them, we even got Eli into academy for a bit.  But all he wanted to do was go fast.  And then Jill had her knee renovated, so she took some time off.  Finally, it was just Lily and I.  I took classes in academy (the groups of kids just learning how to skate) and eventually joined Lily in the club taking private lessons with her and her coach.  I even have a locker!

These days when Lily and I go for a session with the coach it's a matter of keeping Lily on the ice while I get some more training.  I'm a really good student: I learn all the same tricks every week!  It's hard to remember what a half flip is vs a toe loop vs any kind of lutz.  But oh so long ago I thought I'd never get a backward one foot glide, or any kind of crossover.  But I did, and those are fun now.  The goal was to be able to do something on purpose that put me off both feet and back down on the ice without breaking anything.  I guess I've made that goal, but we can modify it to "jump with a spin" -- that will take a long while yet!

I'm an old dog, and these new tricks don't come cheap.  I've been sore in all joints, sprained wrists, bruised my butt a million times, smacked myself into a concussion once, and broken a rib.  I've been the only middle aged man in classes of little girls, and I've fallen enough times in front of enough people that I really don't have a lot of shame left.  I decided that falling means I'm trying really hard, and for the most part it pays off.  I'll never be as good as the older guys in the club who compete, but I have fun, pay my dues, and every once in a while when all of the stars align and I get two or three moves in a row that just flow together I feel like a pretty, pretty ballerina.  But in a manly way.  :)

I don't really have any "plans" for my skating career, but as long as Lily skates, I'll skate.  It's a wonderful father-daughter sport, and it's a lot of fun.  If she told me I was embarrassing her I'd quit in a moment -- but I would probably look for a new club. :)

The Ice Show

Lily has been in the show three years now, and last year I wistfully thought it would be kind of fun.  This year I pushed it a bit and made it known I was interested.  There weren't enough adults for an adult number, so they came up with an idea for my contribution:  Cuteness Wrangler.  Every year the youngest of the young in the academy have a number in the show.  It's mostly a matter of cuter than cute tinier than tiny little girls in button perfect outfits toddle across the ice.  Often they fall right on their butts.  It's not planned, but it's part of the ultra-cute.

I'm essentially Simon in a Simon-says game on the ice.  I corral them in the right general direction, and when the two year old wanders into the middle of the ice looking for mommy and daddy, I zoom in and gently redirect her back to the group.  I spend a lot of time doing that.  And yeah, I said two.  Ages in our group of ten (!) range from 2 to 7, and you'd be surprised where the skill levels hash out -- you can't tell who'll be good until they zoom past you on the ice.  But it's a lot of fun and I get to help these kids have some fun and be in a show.  And I get to drop a crossover in there once in a while.  Jill says I need to throw more tricks in there, but I'll play it by ear.  It's nice not to have a waltz jump to worry about.

Initially I was worried this wouldn't be enough for me, but it really is.  And I think if they want me back I'll do it again next year.  I would be fine being the Cuteness Wrangler every year.  They may be cuter than me, but I can out-skate a two year old any day!

Creeper!

That'ssssa a very nicccsssseeee ssssstuffie I made there....

"Creeper" from the video game Minecraft. 

 No pattern, no pins, all freestyle cutting and sewing..

Sunday Night Stuffies

We watched the last Harry Pottery and I finished Walleye the Walrus.  Awesome!

Saturday Night Stuffies

Lily and I made a polar bear tonight.  My first homemade stuffed animal.  His name is Pablo the Polar Bear. His ears are off kilter (thanks to Lily) and his tail is off center as well (thanks to me) -- he's a scruffy little guy, but the kids absolutely love him, and he taught us a lot about how to make a little friend.  Awesome!

(BTW, he goes to Jill, who thought the Polar Bear looked cute in the book we used.  The kids get to fight over who gets the next one..)

Heading Downriver again...

If the weather holds (I don't care about cold, just rain/snow at this time of year), and it looks like it will, I'll be taking another quick trip on the Mississippi.  Going from Minneapolis to Red Wing, roughly 70 miles.  At the pace of my boat and the lesser currents of autumn, I'm banking on 7 miles per hour for a ten hour trip.   Spreading it over two days I'll find a nice slough to drop anchor for the night and have a nice little wavy night's sleep.  Jill and the kids will meet me in Red Wing -- or any other landing before that point if something doesn't work out according to plan.

I had been saying I didn't do as much boat camping as I'd wanted to this year, and Jill was so supportive of a last little jaunt.  She's awesome!

I'll be boating alone, but filing a travel plan as well as reporting in via social networks.  And the GPS will be on the whole time, I'm sure.  Really looking forward to it!  Me and my boat..

The River

Mine is a small boat. Ok, a Tiny Boat. But I feel like this when I'm on any river:

View Larger Map

You can see that the towboat is pushing hard, but sliding a bit to port (left) so that he can overcompensate on the turn.

The science museum of Minnesota has a towboat/barge simulator that looks like a fun video game. I mean, it's just driving a slow boat down a river right? The moment a kid steps up to it they're excited, but by the first river bend they're shoving those barges up on the beach.

So I step up, never having played, and simply apply my "slow boat, takes a long time to respond, think about the *next* bend" logic and I took the barge and boat through downtown and on to the end of the simulation. I was quite proud of myself.

It would be months later that I would apply these rules in the real world with my boat on the river in some more "technical" (read: crazy wind, currents, and waves) waters and I really understood the intensity of the river.

So now when I see this picture in google maps of this tow pushing sideways up a bend, it just makes me really appreciate what's going on so much more. And makes me want to make another voyage...

This.

Don't Ask Don't Tell is over. Now watch what happens. Hard to argue against something if the military has accepted it.

Life As We Knew It (book series)

Jill (in her saintly way) tutors kids at a local school and one of the classes she stops in at was reading this book. So she got to hear the teacher reading snippets and was curious to know what the whole book was like. I found her copy lying around and, thinking it was a book club book, read the back cover to find out what they were reading this month.

Much to my surprise I was pulled in immediately. Apocalypse? The common man? Perfect! In reading some online reviews it was quite positive and most comments said they literally couldn't put it down. Got about a quarter of the way through it one night and the following night I was kept awake finishing it. You can't stop reading. You just can't. I was reading it on my Nook Color, which I love. Initially got it to hack and turn into an Android tablet, but I use it stock as an eReader. Lovely!

The book is actually teen fiction, but it's really quite dark. Told from the perspective of a girl as diary entries, it's pretty tame but the underlying concept just looms over you and makes you feel like you're a part of the story.

By the two thirds point I was sure I wouldn't be reading the next books in the series. It was too stressful and I just wanted it to be over. I was enjoying it in a "it's the end of the world and nobody feels fine" but I connected so much with the family I felt like my world was ending. It's all common stuff. Electricity, gas, water, food. Everything we take for granted in our lives, and they were slowly disappearing from theirs.

Right up to the last five pages I was done. I just couldn't take it. And when I finished the last paragraph I was trying to figure out if I should get the sample of the next one and just read a couple sentences. But I knew that would involve less sleep that night.

Found the next edition at the Library, online! With a few clicks of a mouse I downloaded it, authorized it on my Nook Color, and now I am all ready to lose more sleep.